klarner politics

This Web page features data collected by Carl Klarner of Indiana State University for public use and is supported by the Indiana State University Center for Governmental Services.  Data on state politics and elections are presented, as well as codebooks associated with each dataset.  Please cite me if you use my data by referring to the following web link(http://www.indstate.edu/polisci/klarnerpolitics.htm).  Furthermore, I’d be grateful if you would let me know by e-mail (Carl.Klarner@indstate.edu) if you’ve downloaded these data so I can use that information in grant applications.

 

State Legislative Election Returns Data, 1967-2010

This data set contains information on state legislative election returns from 1967 through 2010. Each observation in the data set refers to an individual candidate who ran for state legislative office during this time period. There are a total of 308,125 observations in the data set. The years 1967 to 2003 contained in the last edition of the dataset have been extensively cleaned, and the years 2004 to 2010 have been added.

We greatly encourage scholars and others to make use of the data for their research. If you use the data, we request that you include the following citation to the data set.

Klarner, Carl, William Berry, Thomas Carsey, Malcolm Jewell, Richard Niemi, Lynda Powell, and James Snyder. State Legislative Election Returns (1967-2010). ICPSR34297-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2013-01-11. doi:10.3886/ICPSR34297.v1.

We would also greatly appreciate receiving citation information for any papers or publications that make use of this data. Please send such information directly to Carl Klarner (Carl.Klarner@indstate.edu).

While every effort has been made to eliminate any errors in the data set, with almost a third of a million cases, some errors almost certainly exist. If you identify any errors, please contact Carl Klarner. Please describe the nature of the error, the observation(s) affected by the error, and your source for the correct information.

Codebook
34297-0001-Codebook.pdf

Zipped STATA File:
SLERs1967to2010_2012_05_26.zip

Zipped SPSS File:
34297-0001-Data.zip

These data are also archived at ICPSR at the following link.
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/34297

 

State Partisan Balance Data

Dataset includes number and percent of state legislators who are Democrats and Republicans, party control of state legislatures and governor’s offices, and different measures of party control of state institutions for the years 1937 to 2011.  Also includes variables that indicate what percentage of legislators are up for election in a year and whether there is a gubernatorial election.  “Source Files” give documentation on coding and primary sources used to construct the data.

Partisan_Balance_For_Use2011_06_09.xls
Partisan_Balance_For_Use2012_10_18_Codebook.doc
StatePartisanBalance1934to2011_SourceFiles_2011_05_24.xls
StatePartisanBalance1934to2011_SourceFiles_2011_05_24_Codebook.doc

 

State Economic Data

 Dataset with state quarterly personal income, area population (with 2001 to 2009 state population imputed utilizing 2010 population information, which isn't available from the Census yet), gross state product, state finance data (expenditures, revenues, budget surplus, spending on the state legislature), and housing prices.

State_Econ_Quarterly2012_09_06.xlsx
State_Econ_Quarterly2012_09_06_Codebook.docx

 

Gallup Presidential Approval and Congressional Vote Intention

 Files with Gallup’s presidential approval and congressional vote intention series.  A number of features have been created to make using these variables in election forecasting easier.  For example, the file automatically identifies the survey asked as close as possible to X number of days before the election, for all years.  Let me know if you’d like these files.

 

Governors Dataset

 This dataset mostly covers 1961 to 2010 depending on the variable, but sometimes goes back to 1936 or 1937 for several variables.
The highlights of which variables this dataset contains is as follows:
Several that track state biennium cycles (taking state odd-year elections into account)
Names of governors
Whether a gubernatorial election was held that year
Whether a governor left office mid-year
Whether the party of the governor changed mid-year
A dummy variable indicating whether a budget passed in a year
A dummy variable indicating whether a governor is new
A dummy variable indicating whether a governor served as governor in the past
Number of years a governor has served
Number of budgets a governor has overseen
Number of years in a gubernatorial term
Number of years left in a gubernatorial term
A dummy variable indicating whether a state-year has some type of gubernatorial term limit
Type of term limit (1= one term limit, etc.)
Years left before a governor will be term limited out
A dummy variable indicating whether a governor is a lame duck
A dummy variable indicating whether a governor is in their last year before being termed out
A dummy variable indicating whether a governor is in their second to last term before being termed out
A dummy variable indicating whether a governor is a woman
A dummy variable indicating whether a governor served in the state legislature in the past
A dummy variable indicating whether a governor served in the US Congress in the past
Party of the governor
Number os years since the other major party held the governor's office
Variable indicating whether an election has no incumbent running because of a term limit

StateElections_Gub_2012_09_06_Public_Version.xlsx
StateElections_Gub_2012_09_06_Public_Version_Codebook.docx